3

Angela frowned as they drove. It occurred to her that it was, actually, rather unusual that someone had been home at every house they had gone to.

"What?" Jackson asked her.

"Every house you went to—was there someone home?" she asked.

He nodded. "What about you?" he asked.

"Every house."

"Well, I saw you talking to the older woman—" Jackson said.

"Who certainly didn't climb any trees. But think about it. Every house had someone answer the door? Kids are in school; people go to work," she said thoughtfully.

"Well, you're usually the one doing all the computer searches—" Jackson began.

"Right. But I'm going to call Bruce McFadden. He's in the office while we're out and I'm going to get some tech people going on this," Angela said.

"Excellent," Jackson agreed. "Did you speak with anyone who seemed suspicious?" he asked her.

She was thoughtful. "There was a man of about forty who almost seemed amused—but then a little kid, maybe three or four, walked up by him and he wanted all talk of anything gruesome stopped. There was one other fellow, same age, with a woman, his wife, and he seemed . . . squirrelly?"

"Squirrelly?"

She made a face at him. "The other guy; the one in the house with the kid. He seemed more suspicious to me—until the kid arrived."

"BTK," Jackson said.

"What?"

"The guy had a family—and got away with murder for years and years."

"True," Angela agreed. She looked at her phone. "Guy with the kid was Peter Alexander. Guy and wife were Harold and Missy Nottingham." She looked over at him. "So, I'm not sure about a dad or a couple, but Jackson, what if one of those people who opened a door didn't belong in the house? What if—"

"What if the dead man in the tree was the rightful owner of one of the houses?" Jackson suggested. "Since we don't have an I.D. on our corpse yet. The only thing that I got was the woman who thought that she'd seen a red pickup in the neighborhood, as if whoever was in it was watching, studying, the street. Dante put out an APB and called me back two minutes later about this new corpse."

She shrugged. "I'm putting through a call to Bruce."

"Do it," he agreed.

She made the call; when she had finished speaking with Bruce, she saw that they had just about travelled down Canal and over to Esplanade. Soon, they saw Dante's car along with a few other police vehicles.

Jackson parked and they produced their badges to get through the tape and by the officers holding the site to where Dante was waiting for them.

He pointed.

This time, the corpse lay in a low-lying thicket of grass and waterside weeds. The face had been mutilated and painted so that it looked like a zombie.

Fitting, since the surrounding trees had been fitted out with ghosts created from white sheets and plastic hanging skeletons.

How many people might have looked over from the street and imagined that the dead man was just another Halloween decoration.

"The coroner's office is sending another medical examiner out," Dante informed them as they reached his side.

He stood close, staring at the dead man.

"Cause of death . . ." Jackson murmured. "Most probably that long line of red at his throat. Looks like he bled out and quickly."

Dante nodded.

Angela studied the dead man. In her mind, she saw a faceless figure approaching from behind, knife ready.

And before the victim could turn around . . .

The attacker swept the knife from left to right around his throat.

So, that someone might well have been caught in the blood spatter, but . . .

It was Halloween. And this body had apparently been here at least a day or so. Whoever had killed the man had ample time to be in another state by now.

Except that it was likely that the same killer had murdered again, this time chopping his corpse into several pieces before "decorating" an area for Halloween.

"We can only hope for DNA, something," Jackson murmured.

It was then that Angela noted a man looking on from behind the crime-scene tape. She thought that she had seen him with a woman at one of the houses across the street from her side, perhaps the woman who had told Jackson about the pickup truck.

"Jackson, take a look," she murmured. "Didn't you just talk to that man?"

"Yep, Greg Eaton, husband of Cassie who saw the truck."

"I'm going to wander over; he had to have been right behind us getting over here."

Jackson nodded. "Lay on the charm. See if he knows anything else."

She made her way back to the street where the man was standing. "Greg?" she said, joining him. "Special Agent Crow was just speaking with you and your wife. Was there something else that you thought might help us?" she asked.

He was staring toward the spot by the river where Jackson stood with Dante Harrison.

"Another one. Halloween. I was just . . . well, could one of you possibly come with me for a minute? There might be . . . something else you should see."

"Oh?" Angela winced inwardly. Another one. Another corpse?"

"Our son might have seen something, but he's very upset and I was hoping that if he saw that someone in law enforcement was with me . . ." he appeared to be pained, and naturally, of course, a man concerned for his son.

As bodies were popping up with the Halloween decorations.

"Of course, let me just—"

She was startled when he moved, when she felt the sharpness of a blade against her rib cage.

"No," he told her, smiling. "Just come quietly now."

"Come quietly? Come where? I guess you are the killer. Enjoying all the havoc you've created. Come with you. You want to kill me in front of your son?" Angela demanded.

"I could kill you right here in the blink of an eye. You might have realized that I know exactly what I'm doing with a knife," he told her. "Now, here's the thing. That isn't my son back at the house. Oh, ouch! That isn't even my house. But you know my dear ‘wife' does not like children at all, and she's watching over the boy, so . . . no fuss! Wave to the others, and just come along with me. If not, I kill you now and when I'm arrested, the boy dies."

Angela managed to smile sweetly. "I will come along with you."

"I figured you might. Though honestly, you must have an inflated picture of yourself—you must know that I intend to kill you both eventually! What a beautiful, beautiful decoration you will make! All that blond hair—I think I'll make you a princess. And it's all okay. I counted on the fact that you'd be convinced you could save the kid and yourself."

"Don't kill the kid."

She turned to smile back at Jackson.

No, she wasn't so convinced that she could save herself and the child.

But she believed that Jackson could. And she told him, with her sweet smile and wave, that something was very, very wrong."

*

"Someone! Anyone!"

Jackson was ready to move when he saw the man in the crowd, the many crying out, trying to touch others . . .

Some of them gave little shudders at his touch, but none seemed to hear him.

And, of course, Jackson knew why.

The man was dead.

"Dante, something is up. I know by the way that Angela looked at me. Stay on the phone—"

"If you know something, I'll get officers out—"

"No! Just listen for my call or text. I'm afraid that we're going to need to be careful, to avoid being seen. This kind of killer will take anyone with him if he thinks he's going to die," Jackson said. "Please, trust me!"

He moved through the crowd, speaking softly when he reached the spirit of the dead man.

"I can see you; I can hear you."

"That man, that awful man! That young woman just went with him. He isn't Greg Eaton; Greg Eaton is my grandson, and he's at work. This man is Emory Dalton. And he isn't married, and that isn't his child in the house. The boy was kidnapped and the two of them . . . him and that woman, they, oh, God, they get off on what they're doing! She likes to help, she likes to lick blood . . ."

The ghost's voice trailed, and he shook his head.

Jackson studied the man briefly; he had been older at his death, somewhere between seventy and eighty. He was always grateful when the dead he met were older; they had at least lived good lives. And this man—"

"Charles Eaton," the ghost told him. "During my life, I restored half the old homes in the French Quarter. I love New Orleans. I watched the good and the bad, but this monster . . . he's just taken that woman—"

"My wife and partner; she's an agent. She'll keep playing him. She's good and I'm going to get there as quickly as I dare, and she'll know how to work it with me."

"I watched him; I watched him, and I couldn't stop him!" Jackson's newfound ghost friend told him. "He was ranting as he chopped up the body he left in the trees; he's killing people he thinks wronged him. And he doesn't understand that my grandson cares about the work he does at City Hall, and, well, suffice it to say, this bastard was fired for being totally inefficient. Apparently, he wanted to run for some kind of office . . . the body parts on the shore is that of a fellow who dated his ex-wife. The pieces in the trees . . . well, they belong to the man who fired him."

They were all things that Dante needed to know, but Jackson was hurrying to his car. The man—Emory Dalton—had evidently followed them and he would recognize the car—but there was a clump of trees at the corner near Jack Dupree's house; he could park there and slip around."

"He will kill them!" the ghost whispered. "And he'll try to frame my grandson!"

"We will stop this. Because you can help me," Jackson told him.

"No one even sees me. I can't fire a gun. I can't—I can't even fight a knife!" the ghost said.

"But you can tell Angela that we're there and I'm willing to bet you can create a distraction," Jackson assured him.

The ghost didn't bother to open the passenger's door when they reached the car, but he did slide in. Jackson drove as quickly as he could, carefully taking a route that brought him through the Quarter rather than around it, and taking backstreets rather than the more direct way on Canal, not wanting to be seen following the man, Angela, or the car.

He'd moved quickly.

That, or Emory hit a lot of traffic lights because he'd hidden the car and he and the ghost had emerged when Emory Dalton drove up to the house.

He had made Angela drive; he had her Glock and was holding it on her as they exited the car.

Jackson contemplated taking a shot; he was just a little too far away to guarantee that he wouldn't hit Angela instead.

He let them head into the house. Then he nodded at the ghost and the two of them hurried to the house where Emory Dalton had taken Angela.

"Get in there and report back to me," Jackson told the ghost. He pointed to the front windows of the home that had been built in the mid eighteen-hundreds.

"I know the house," Charles Eaton told him. "I was called out to repair some damage in the back after a bad storm. The owners wanted to move west, and I'd fallen in love with the place, so I bought it. There's a back door and it has a code. The code is 8847. You can slip in!"

Nice! And of course, the house had once belonged to Charles Eaton!

"I'll still need help. Sir, can you knock books over, create any small disturbance?" Jackson asked.

The ghost nodded grimly. "Get in that way, and I'll see to it that the coast is clear from that back door. Kitchen flows into a dining room; there's a front parlor. He's been keeping the kid in the music room, second archway after the parlor."

"Got it!" Jackson said. "Thank you! Thank you so much."

"No! Thank you!" the ghost whispered. "He either plans to frame grandson or kill him—or both. Please, please . . . make this the reason I stayed!" he whispered.

Jackson nodded, assuring him. "We will stop this. You and me," he said.

And he prayed that he was right.

Angela, he told himself, could hold her own. She had done so many times in their years with the Krewe.

She would do so today.

As the ghost of Charles Eaton slipped through the door, Jackson quickly made his way around the back of the house.

The back door code box was there, just as the ghost had said. He keyed in the numbers that Charles Eaton had given him. The door lock silently sprang open, and he slipped into the house.

The minute he had done so, he heard the boy crying.

And he heard the man he now knew to be Emory Dalton laughing with the woman, pushing the boy in front of Angela.

"So, little boy, little boy! Do I cut you up in front of her or cut her up in front of you?" he asked.

"Let the kid go!" Angela said. "There can't be any fun in chopping him up. And, no offense, but you're an idiot. People saw me leave with you. They're never going to believe that Greg killed us because they know—"

"Oh, honey, honey!" the woman said. "Greg will come home and we'll shoot him with your gun. It's all perfectly planned. It will look like he went a killing spree—such a smart, dedicated man, you know—and that before you bled out, you managed to shoot him! Come on now, we've figured it all out!"

If the situation wasn't so dire, Jackson might have smiled.

Because Angela knew that he was there; the ghost was at her side.

Emory Dalton had the gun; the woman was brandishing the knife. Angela saw him and gave him a nod, grabbing the boy and ducking.

Jackson took the shot, bringing Emory Dalton down.

And Angela shoved the little boy aside before lunging with precision at the woman, knocking her off her feet, sending the knife flying across the room.

Jackson hurried out from dining room, producing zip-tie cuffs and lowering himself by Angela to cuff the woman.

Angela stood.

"Sir! Thank you!" she told the ghost.

"Thank you, thank you!" Jackson whispered.

The woman lay on the floor, alternately cursing and swearing that she'd been forced into doing everything lest she wind up in pieces herself. She screamed that they were crazy, talking to the air, that they had been the killers themselves.

The little boy was crying. Angela loved children and she was great with them. She promised that they would get him back to his mommy and daddy.

Jackson called Dante; officers and an ambulance were on the way. He'd caught Emory Dalton in the right shoulder; the man had a chance of living, but Jackson had been more intent on him losing the gun than on killing him.

They had learned many things in the field. A kill shot was sometimes necessary. And sometimes, it was right to remember that they weren't juries or judges.

Soon, it seemed that sirens were going off everywhere. In the middle of the chaos, the real Greg Eaton returned home.

The ghost of his grandfather appeared to be weeping as his grandson learned about the plot against him. He was stunned. And grateful.

Jackson and Angela spoke with him along with Dante. The ghost of Charles Eaton looked on.

And when the woman had been brought away by the police, Emory Dalton taken away by the ambulance, and child services had come for the boy, it was time for them to leave.

Dante wanted to take them to dinner.

The ghost of Charles Eaton wanted just a minute.

Jackson looked at Angela and knew that she wanted just one thing.

To go home. But she would spend time first with Charles, thanking him again and again, and accepting his belief that it was now time for him to move on.

If he chose not to, of course, they'd find him again. They seemed to wind up in New Orleans often enough.

They managed a few minutes alone out by the car, the three of them incredibly grateful, Angela for her life and that of the child, Charles for his grandson, a good man with tremendous promise.

Charles gave Angela a massive hug. She more or less managed to give him one in return.

But then Charles slipped back in the house; he was going to watch over his grandson while he grappled with the terrible things that had been done by a bitter man he had once known.

Angela agreed that they could have dinner with Dante, if they headed home right after.

And it was good.

They expected no less from anyone associated with Adam Harrison.

"How did you . . . how did you know how to get in the house?" Dante asked Jackson.

"Uh, luck?" Jackson suggested.

But Dante laughed. "You forget, Adam Harrison is my great uncle! If there was someone special."

Jackson glanced at Angela. She glanced at him and shrugged.

"The real Greg Eaton's grandfather," she said softly.

Dante nodded, not missing a beat. "I just wanted to know, to have a special commendation to the man at church this week."

"I'm sure that would be appreciated!" Jackson assured him.

Dinner was good.

Then, their plane was waiting.